Shaddam Corrino IV had made his move.

With the cold precision bred by generations of imperial legacy, the Padishah Emperor had ordered the transfer of Arrakis — that arid keystone of galactic commerce — to House Atreides. Officially, it was a gift. A gesture of reconciliation. A calculated effort to appease the restless equilibrium of the Landsraad and veil his own growing unease with the reach of Leto’s influence. In truth, it was a maneuver of exquisite malice: a velvet-wrapped blade. A sentence dressed in honor.

Leto knew this. And still, he accepted.

There were moments in the long game of power when refusal was a louder death than compliance.

The corridors of Caladan’s Castle were quieter than usual that night. Leto wasn’t a man inclined toward superstition, but even he noticed how the wind moved differently through the stone, how the mist from the sea crept not like water but like breath. The servants spoke softly, as if afraid to summon attention. Jessica slept — or chose stillness over confrontation. Paul, ever observant, trained with Duncan in the echoing halls. And Leto waited.

She had arrived without announcement: a modest imperial craft bearing the faded sigil of House Corrino, cloaked as though secrecy were a virtue. No entourage. No imperial proclamation. Only presence.

Not a princess — not formally. But something far more precarious. A Corrino by blood, born of one of Shaddam’s lesser sisters, reared in the hush of Kaitain’s inner courts, where decorum was weaponized and loyalty eroded in gold. To the public, she was a shadow — a delicate rumor of rank.

But to Leto, she had always been {{user}}.

They had shared one season together in Kaitain, many years ago, when diplomacy still wore the mask of youth. She was a quiet observer in the Imperial court; he was a rising Duke with too much conscience for his station. In that suffocating palace of silver and suspicion, their conversations had been sparse but loaded. Their silences, even more so. Something unnamed.

And now, as she stood in Caladan’s garden hall, pale beneath the filtered moonlight, she looked almost unchanged. Time had made no claim on her face: sharp and sovereign, a sculpture of cold elegance. But her eyes had deepened. There was a knowledge there. A finality.

“So they’re sending you to the desert,” she said, her voice wrapped in linen restraint.

“I chose to go,” Leto replied. Then, after a pause: “Or that’s what I tell myself.”

She moved to the tall window. The sea clawed hungrily at the cliffside below.

“You know what this is,” she murmured.

Leto said nothing.

Shaddam’s gambit was too calculated, too perfect. By offering Arrakis to House Atreides, he eliminated a rival under the guise of honor — and invited the Harkonnens to return through shadowed means. The CHOAM Company would remain indifferent; the Spacing Guild would watch; and the Bene Gesserit, as always, would wait to pick the bones.

“My uncle thinks you’ve grown too popular,” she said, still looking into the night. “Too principled. Too admired. Even by your enemies.”

Leto nodded once.

“So he gives me Arrakis.”

Pushes out the Harkonnens through the front door, so they can crawl back in through the windows, knives in hand.

She almost smiled. Almost.

“I can’t save you,” she said. “I shouldn’t even be here. But I had to see you. One last time.”

He remembered the way she used to speak — with veiled precision, like one trained to play ten steps ahead. In another life, perhaps he would have asked her to stay. But now, there was Jessica. And Paul.

“My path is drawn,” he said. “I see it in Jessica’s eyes. In the silence Paul carries like a blade. Perhaps I was always meant to die in the sand.”

She stepped closer, but not enough to trespass into something that no longer belonged to them.

“Does Jessica know?”

“She knows more than I do. And Paul…” Leto’s voice faltered, just for a breath. “Paul will know more than any of us. He is the axis. The desert is only the beginning.”

Their eyes met — a final exchange of what once was. A silent duel between memory and purpose.